UMass Chan professor, vice provost for research dies unexpectedly

PHOTO | Courtesy UMass Chan Dr. Michael Green, the late UMass Chan vice provost for research

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By Isabel Tehan

Dr. Michael Green, vice provost for strategic research initiatives, and professor and chair of molecular, cell and cancer biology at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, has died.

Green was a critical member of UMass Chan’s growth and research teams, and served as director of the UMass Cancer Center and as co-director of the Li Weibo Institute for Rare Diseases Research, according to a Monday announcement from UMass Chan.

Green’s professional work centered on gene expression and regulation. Beyond his work at the medical school, he served in 2016 as a scientific co-founder of Fulcrum Therapeutics, a clinical-stage Cambridge biopharmaceutical company focused on gene-based diseases.

“This is a huge loss -- for his wife Maria, for @UMassChan, for me, for science,” said his brother, Dr. Eric Green, director of the National Institutes of Health National Human Genome Research Institute, in a Monday tweet.

Michael Green died suddenly last week at age 69, according to the tweet.

Green was a distinguished figure in the national medical landscape, having been elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He earned his medical and doctoral degrees from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis before completing his postdoctoral work at Harvard University in Cambridge. He joined UMass Chan in 1990.